Shades of Red
by Silverbelle98
Summary: Severus Snape had never seen hair quite like Lily's...       One-shot.


**_Author's note: I felt the urge to write a short one-shot about Snape and Lily. Thank you very much for reading! I would really appreciate reviews. If you see an error in spelling or grammar, I would greatly appreciate if you could tell me. Constructive criticism is nice as well - I would like to improve. Thanks!_**

**_To anyone reading my other, much longer story: I'm really sorry but I'm not going to be able to update for a while. My computer is telling me the entire file is corrupted and I'm not sure what to do. Sorry._**

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><p>Severus Snape had never seen hair quite like Lily's.<p>

From the very start, it captivated him from where he hid behind bushes, watching her. It was a deep scarlet; so different from the drab, ordinary blonde of her sister's. It was a blaze of colour that was conspicuously absent in his dingy and dim home, and in the dirty street littered with rubbish outside his grimy windows; a breath of air and a flash of brilliance. It was intoxicating.

Sometimes he would watch her from the shadows just to see the bright spark of red, watch her laugh and run with her hair whipping behind her, her sister following with a reluctant look on her pinched face.

It was not just red, he found out later as they lay outside of her house, fingers entwined and staring up at the night sky. There were shades of gold and amber, a deeper red and streaks of crimson. He could look at it for hours and was horrified when she cut it to her chin in fourth year.

She grew it out eventually, of course; it was just a passing style, a bored decision on her part. Severus pleaded with her not to ever cut it again and she agreed with a puzzled look on her face.

When she waved her hand like an excited child in class, he always found himself gazing at the back of her head, mesmerized by her glimmering red hair, only to be roused from his stupor with a little stinging jinx from that filthy Potter boy.

For a while, everything was perfect.

Then it all fell apart.

The day that they fought was one of the worst days in his short life. The stunned look on her face – however brief – after he shouted that forbidden word, was like a punch to the gut. She turned sharply on her heel, her long red hair whipping behind her, and strode off. Somehow, he knew that she would never forgive him but he ignored the feeling.

She would forgive him. She had to.

He cornered her many times, begging her forgiveness, telling her over and over again that it was just a stupid mistake. It was just a childish fight, he was convinced. All best friends had to have them but they would always forgive each other. They were best friends. She would forgive him.

"Best friends?" she said, after he blurted it out one day. She was paler than normal, freckles standing out against her white skin. "_Are _we best friends, Sev- Snape?"

Her use of his nickname, cut off sharply, felt like a slap.

"Of course!" he said hastily, covering for his momentary lapse. She gave him a searching, deep look, her bright green eyes scanning his own black ones. He looked at her hopefully, starting to smile. Of course she would forgive him.

"I don't think so anymore, Sev," she said softly, looking at him regretfully. His heart seemed to seize up and he choked. She smiled sadly at him one last time, then turned and walked off. His heart breaking in his chest, he watched her walk away. She would come back. She had to.

She didn't.

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><p>In the horrible, endless weeks and months that followed, Severus did his absolute best to ignore Lily. It was like a broken bone, he told himself. You couldn't have a messy, splintered break if you wanted to heal. It had to be a clean snap.<p>

It was possibly the most useless thing he'd ever told himself.

Whenever she passed in the corridors or sat in front of him in classrooms, his eyes seemed to travel to her irresistibly, staring at the golden lights that gleamed softly in her hair as the light fell on it. As ever, a sharp little hex from Potter under the desks brought him back to his senses and he would return his eyes to the parchment on his desk, eyes stinging slightly.

The endless, painful cycle continued on until he couldn't bear it any longer. He thought that one day he might just scream and start indiscriminately jinxing anything that got near.

He formulated the perfect plan in those stolen little hours sitting in the library, skulking behind a shelf and listening to Lily chatter to her friends. He didn't care about them, of course; they were just meaningless buzz contaminating the words of Lily. They were so very boring, with hair of brown or blonde. Lily was like a spark among them, he found himself thinking as he absentmindedly scribbled in the borders of his Potions book and listened to his beautiful Lily talk about-

His ink bottle fell with a crash and the girls fell silent, looking around in surprise. He didn't care; his ears were buzzing and his chest heaving with rage.

Potter? She was talking about _Potter? _And not in that annoyed voice she used to talk to him with while they endlessly found things to hate about Potter. It was a slightly giggly voice he had heard _so _many times. Never about him, of course, but those stupid girls who sat beside him in Potions would giggle about boys they liked in exactly that voice.

He strode from the library in a towering rage, hexing a tiny, timid looking first year boy with boils. The boy's screams followed him all the way down to his common room, where he stewed in a pit of loathing and fury until he could no longer bear it and tracked down Lily.

She was, of course, surrounded by her stupid giggly friends. He ignored them. The moment they saw him though, the short blonde one let out a supercilious laugh and pointed at him and the taller brunette curled her lip at him scornfully. Lily sighed slightly.

"Could you leave us alone for a minute?" she said to her friends, but Severus barely heard her. His ears were still buzzing with rage.

"Potter?" he started in a hiss of fury. "How could you – how dare you?"

"I don't know what you're babbling about," Lily said coldly. She turned and began to walk off, fumbling in her bag for something. He followed her, flapping his arms at her and hissing like an angry goose.

"But – you can't – you're _mine_." It slipped out before he could stop it and he knew immediately that it was the wrong thing to say. She froze, her back to him, then very slowly turned to face him.

"Yours_?_" said Lily in a voice that heralded danger, a spark in her eyes, drawing herself up to her admittedly unimpressive height. "_Yours_? Severus, I don't know where you get your archaic and – frankly – idiotic notions of possession, but I don't _belong _to you." She drew out the word as though it was filthy. "And I never will."

She whirled around, long crimson hair whipping him in the face, and stomped off.

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><p>He spent that entire night wallowing in self-pity and misery, alternating with hatred and absolute loathing for Potter. He cooked up an admittedly desperate plan overnight, images of his precious Lily and that foul Potter entwined… he didn't sleep at all and when the classes of the day were finally over, he began to search for Lily.<p>

He would apologise and tell her he would never go back to his Death Eater friends again and she would be believe him… they would have two children and they would both have Lily's glorious red hair. They would look just like her in every way and it would be perfect…

All his perfect, wonderful fantasies seemed to shatter as he turned the corner and happened to glance in an empty classroom. _His _Lily was sitting with her back to him on one of the desks, so entwined with _Potter_, of all people, that it was hard to tell which of them was which. One of Potter's hands was tangled in her beautiful red hair (contaminating it, some bitter part of his mind thought) and she was giggling breathlessly between kisses.

He didn't wait for them to turn around before he ran, never looking back, silently berating himself. How could he have ever thought Lily would settle for him? Dark-Arts-loving, greasy, broken down him… not when she had her precious Potter, he thought bitterly. His thoughts slowly turned to Potter. It was all his fault, everything.

He joined the Death Eaters that day.

* * *

><p>The years seemed to flash by, so much faster than they should have. He very rarely saw Lily anymore; the times he did, she was holding Potter's hand tightly and laughing. She looked so very happy… his heart broke a little more every time he saw her.<p>

The day the news came to him that she was going to _marry _Potter; he sat in the tiny, cramped room where he brewed potions completely still for almost five minutes. In the front room, where he had shelves upon shelves of potions for sale, he could still hear the two witches giggling to each other.

"What do you think?" one of the girls said and he heard the chink of a potion as she lifted it. The other one let out a shriek of laughter.

"They'll need that soon enough," she said and they both burst into raucous laughter.

"Well, James keeps nattering on about having a perfect kid named Harry – I don't think they want it."

"I doubt Lily'll want to give up her job," the other witch said. He could hear them clattering around and the chinks of bottles as they lifted up bottles to examine them. "She really does love it there. Hey, it's getting pretty late. Come on, Mum's making meatballs and inviting everyone over. We should probably go."

"Right," the other witch agreed. There was the dusty tinkle of a bell as they pushed the door open and then it slammed shut again. He sat frozen in his chair, mind reeling.

Images of a horrible copy of Potter flashed through his mind. It would be hideous, of course, and not look at all like Lily. It was impossible. Her perfection couldn't be tainted by Potter's spawn. The next second, he realised he was imagining what their son would look like. The next second, every bottle in the room exploded, spraying liquid everywhere, and he let out a yell of rage, sprung to his feet, and kicked over his chair.

He demolished the room and spent much of the next week repairing it, recreating potions. But he wasn't sure his heart would mend quite so easily.

* * *

><p>He attended their wedding.<p>

He dressed in a black cloak, the hood over his face, layered with charms and spells that ensured that no one was quite worried about the strange figure. In fact, the moment they looked away from him, the memory seemed to slide right out of their minds, to be replaced with a feeling of blissful contentment.

He sat in the corner, skulking. A couple of girls sat near him and he did his very best to ignore them.

"Doesn't James look handsome," one of the youngest of the girls whispered to what looked like her sister, who sniggered. The oldest turned in her seat to berate them and he felt a dull pang in his stomach. Marlene McKinnon, a schoolmate.

"That's a married man you're talking about," McKinnon whispered.

"_Soon_ to be married," the older of the girls corrected her and McKinnon cuffed her around the head. The chatter eventually died out to be replaced with a horribly familiar music. Everyone turned in their seats to watch the bride pass.

Severus kept his eyes down, not quite daring to look up. Only when she had taken her place beside James, whose face looked like it might crack if he smiled any harder, did he look up. She was incredibly beautiful and his heart did a funny little squirm in his chest.

Her deep red hair had been curled into ringlets of crimson and a white veil made the brilliant colour of her hair further stand out. She was beaming at James, and seemed barely to be listening to the man standing beside them.

"…may now kiss the bride," the man finished and James barely even waited for him to finish before pulling her into an intense kiss. Severus kept his gaze firmly focused on his knees. His hands were clenched so tightly he could feel the nails bite into the skin and warm blood drip from his hands. They were shaking badly.

He could hear whistles and clapping from around him and even heard Sirius Black let out a loud whoop. His eyes were burning with tears that dripped down his long nose into his lap. He didn't wait long after that; he left as fast as he possibly could and not be conspicuous.

The moment he had tottered into his dingy shop, he collapsed onto his hard bed and wept uncontrollably, cursing whatever deities there might have been and hoping desperately that one day she would look at her husband's face and realise that he was not the man she was looking for.

He would wait until that day.

* * *

><p>He had attended her wedding. Now he attended her funeral.<p>

He wore the same cloak covered in spells to avoid notice. He didn't cry at all. He seemed to be frozen in a state of shock; going through the movements with great effort, but not entirely there.

The room was so full of people desperate to see the mother and father of the one that they were beginning to call 'the Boy-Who-Lived' that he had to stand surrounded by eager people, an elbow jammed into his ribs and someone treading on his toe.

There was a line to the caskets for people to pay their respects. Distantly, he could hear sobbing. With some effort, he managed to turn his head and saw a short blonde girl that he vaguely recognised crying hysterically, sitting alone. He couldn't bring himself to care more than wishing she would be quiet.

The caskets were surrounded by beautiful vases and baskets of pure white lilies. Lilies, the flower that symbolizes death, he thought. Distantly, he thought that she would have hated it. She always did hate people giving her lilies. She insisted it was cliché. He felt the insane urge to laugh bubbling up in his throat and disguised it as a hacking cough. The man in front of him gave him a dirty look.

The line moved very slowly. There was a small child crying somewhere and a tinny ringing in his ears. Now that he was here, he wasn't sure he even wanted to see her. Would her beautiful green eyes be dulled and dark? Would her wonderful red hair have lost its lustre and become as dead and cold as her? He moved forward sluggishly, as if underwater.

There were three people in front of him… two… one… Now he could see her slightly past the large man blocking her. He fingered his wand under his robes, resisting the urge to blast him away and out of his line of vision. He could see strands of red hair against the pure white lining.

His breathing was coming faster and faster.

"Go ahead," the woman behind him murmured. "I'll give you space to say goodbye." She stood back, looking anywhere but him, and he felt vaguely grateful in the small part of his mind that was not screaming alarms.

The man in front of him finally moved away.

Lily lay perfectly still in the casket, hands folded over her chest. She was dressed in her finest white robes. Her eyes were closed, her skin wan and pale. Her hair was as gleamingly magnificent as ever. There was a white lily clasped in her hands.

He stumbled forward, tripping over his own feet. He stood awkwardly beside the casket, staring down at her.

"Hi," he whispered down at her, unsure what you were supposed to say. He swallowed hard and willed his eyes not to well up, not to betray him now.

"I… I miss you," he whispered. "I…" His eyes were indeed betraying him; to his horror he found tears in his eyes and a lump in his throat.

"I love you," he whispered the words he had never been able to say to her in life. "Always."

Numb with shock, he slowly moved away from her, staring at her hungrily, as if he could never look at her enough.

When they lowered her into the ground later that day (she had insisted on a Muggle funeral for her) he watched long after the rest of her friends had left. He watched as they shoveled dirt onto the growing mound and felt tears sliding down his face steadily.

Only one other person remained at the gravesite, long after the diggers had left. He kneeled by the freshly stirred dirt, not even caring, until he heard the soft sound of footsteps behind him and a soft touch on his shoulder. Had it been anyone else, he would have jerked away with a snarl, but he ignored the touch.

"Severus," said the person behind him. "Do you know what you must do?"

"I know, Dumbledore," Severus said bitterly, not looking up. "I will join him at his side today."

"I am truly sorry," Dumbledore said softly.

He ignored Dumbledore. What use were words when the love of his life was gone?

* * *

><p>All the memories flashed before his mind's eye and he might have smiled if he could have. He was lying on a dusty wooden floor, his breathing hitching and gasping. He pressed his fingers to his neck in a vain attempt to staunch the flow. He could feel it soaking his fingers; dripping to the floor. Blood was spreading steadily in a sticky crimson pool around him. He could see the edges of his vision going wobbly and darkening.<p>

There was a sudden sound and the younger Potter appeared. He slowly approached and kneeled next to Severus. His green eyes, so much like hers, gleamed very slightly in the dull light and Severus reached out blood-soaked hands and seized the front of his robes, choking on his own blood. He tried to speak, but only a terrible gurgle came out.

"Take it… take it…"

And the memories came pouring out and with each one, flashes of remembrance. Watching Lily swinging higher than ever… sitting in a clearing with her, watching the sun's light gleaming in her hair… the train and so much excitement… the Sorting ceremony and the terrible swooping feeling of dread as the hat called out Gryffindor… one of the many arguments… the horrible day… the worst day…

More and more images flashed by, faster than ever, but what use were they when she was not in them?

Finally, they faded, and all he could see was those massive green eyes… so much like hers…

"Look… at… me…" he whispered. Those green eyes found his and for one beautiful, endless moment, Lily was kneeling next to him, gloriously solid and real. She was looking down at him with those wonderful almond-shaped eyes and she was taking him home…

The next moment, it was only the grubby Potter boy and his hand had no more strength left in it.

It thudded to the floor.


End file.
